When the Bough Breaks: An Alex Delaware Novel, Book 1

Dr. Morton Handler practiced a strange brand of psychiatry. Among his specialties were fraud, extortion, and sexual manipulation. Handler paid for his sins when he was brutally murdered in his luxurious Pacific Palisades apartment. The police have no leads, but they do have one possible witness: seven-year-old Melody Quinn.

True Detectives: A Novel

In Jonathan Kellerman's gripping novels, the city of Los Angeles is as much a living, breathing character as the heroes and villains who roam its labyrinthine streets. Sunny on the surface but shadowy beneath, this world of privilege and pleasure has a dark core and a dangerous edge. In True Detectives, Kellerman skillfully brings his renowned gifts for breathless suspense and sharp psychological insight to a tale that resonates on every level and satisfies at every turn.

Crime Scene: A Novel

Eccentric, reclusive Walter Rennert lies cold at the bottom of his stairs. At first glance the scene looks straightforward: a once-respected psychology professor done in by booze and a bad heart. But his daughter, Tatiana, insists that her father has been murdered, and she persuades Clay Edison to take a closer look at the grim facts of Rennert's life. What emerges is a history of scandal and violence and an experiment gone horribly wrong that ended in the brutal murder of a coed.

The Murderer's Daughter: A Novel

Brilliant, beautiful, and stunningly effective, psychologist Dr. Grace Blades has a special gift for treating troubled souls and healing tormented psyches - perhaps because she bears her own invisible scars. Only five years old when she witnessed her parents die in a bloody murder-suicide, Grace took refuge in her towering intellect and found comfort in the loving couple who adopted her. But as an adult, Grace's accomplished professional life vies with a covert, high-risk dark side, played out harrowingly. And when Grace's two worlds shockingly converge, her past returns with a vengeance.

The Conspiracy Club

When his brief, passionate romance with nurse Jocelyn Banks is cut short by her kidnapping and brutal murder, Dr. Jeremy Carrier is left emotionally devastated, haunted by his lover's grisly demise and warily eyed by police still seeking a prime suspect in the unsolved slaying. To escape the pain, he buries himself in his work as staff psychologist at City Central Hospital, only to be drawn deeper into a waking nightmare when more women turn up murdered in the same gruesome fashion as Jocelyn Banks.

Double Homicide

Faye and Jonathan Kellerman. Wife and husband. Each a best-selling author on her and his own. Now these masters of the crime novel are writing together for the first time, thrilling us with two riveting tales of murder and suspense.

Daniel says:"OK, I guess"

Publisher's Summary

"Been a while since I had me a nice little whodunit," homicide detective Milo Sturgis tells Alex Delaware. But there's definitely nothing nice about the brutal tableau behind the yellow crime-scene tape. On a lonely lover's lane in the hills of Los Angeles, a young couple lies murdered in a car. Each bears a single gunshot wound to the head. The female victim has also been impaled by a metal spike. And that savage stroke of psychopathic fury tells Milo this case will call for more than standard police procedure. As he explains to Delaware, "Now we're veering into your territory."

It is dark territory, indeed. The dead woman remains unidentified and seemingly unknown to everyone. But her companion has a name: Gavin Quick, and his troubled past eventually landed him on a therapist's couch. It's there, on familiar turf, that Delaware hopes to find vital clues. And that means going head-to-head with Dr. Mary Lou Koppel, a popular celebrity psychologist who fiercely guards the privacy of her clients...dead or alive.

But when there's another gruesomely familiar murder, Delaware surmises that his investigation has struck a nerve. As he trolls the twisted wreckage of Quick's tormented last days, what he finds isn't madness, but the cold-blooded method behind it. And as he follows a chain of greed, corruption, and betrayal snaking hideously through the profession he thought he knew, he'll discover territory where even he never dreamed of treading.

As provocative as it is suspenseful, Therapy is premier Kellerman that finds the award-winning author firing on all creative cylinders and carrying readers on an electrifying ride to a place only he can take them, for an experience they won't soon forget.

Kellerman always writes entertaining stories - some better than others. This was one of his better ones, though a bit on the long side. Milo is another great character, and Alex is 'real'. The plot coincidences were a stretch in places, but all in all, enjoyable.
The reader, Jonathan Rubenstein, is the best audio reader I have ever listened to (and I probably have listened to at least fifty books). His uses his voice, his inflections, intonations, accents - all of it - as if it were an instrument being played by a maestro. I guess it runs in the family, just not the piano!

I am an avid fan of Jonathan Kellerman and am always the first to praise and recommend his books to my friends. However, this one came across to me as a real bomb. Neither Alex nor Milo had his usual sparkle and their back-and-forths, usually so lively and entertaining, were dull, to say the least. The writing, itself, was not up to par but was better than a lot of writers on their good days. I guess what I objected to most was that the author went on and on about the characters' pasts and maladies rather than advancing the story. The killer identified himself halfway through the book and the rest was merely filling. I would rather read a short, really great book than a long, repetitive one.

I will, of course, listen to more of Mr. Kellerman's books and I'm sorry I felt compelled to write this review but when my favorite author, at least in this genre, fails I had to tell you about it.

this was a decent book. not very fast paced ,but decent. and not jonathan's best work either. I found that the process to how Dr. delaware arrived at some of his conclusion to be far fetched and reaching which is why when he turned out to be correct it sort of killed it for me . I was expecting more of a twist to the plot. A bit more natural flow with some logic to it. instead you get these giant leaps , that turn out to be true.

There are a few good moments in this installment of Alex and Milo's crime solving partnership. Unfortunately there are very few of these and the storyline running through the middle of the work is so long, convoluted and unpleasant that it was a struggle to stick with it. I found this audio long on venom and short on plot with hardly anyone coming off well in the telling. If not for my personal determination to listen to all the Alex Delaware novels I'd have given up on it.

I'm surprised by the overall rating of this book, but I know everyone has different tastes. This book got my attention from the very beginning (usually it take 1 or 2 CD's before the story gets going) and has continued to add new twists and turns with each chapter. I recommend it and am going to request more content by this author.

OK, I liked the book, but I really miss the girlfriend Robin and Spike. While they made a modest appearance in this novel, it wasn't enough. The new chick's OK, but she's no Robin. Kellerman has crafted yet another, "can't wait to see how it finishes" mystery. I found myself driving a bit more slowly as I approached home because I didn't want to stop listening to the story. Milo is very present in this novel and as a result you get to know his character better, although Rick was hardly mentioned. The more I learn about this detective with the big, meaty paws, the more I like him.

I couldn't stand this narrator - It made it hard to the believe in any of the characters. Also, Kellerman slips in bizarre right-wing commentary wherever he can. At least twice, the result is absurd, The cariacture of a leftist bookstore and the speech given there about Israel and Zionism were pure propaganda. Also, he tries to suggest that talk radio is run by anti-George Bush shock-jocks., oh yeah, and the villainous network of prison-reformers is another weird attempt to make progressives seem "outwardly nice" but secretly wicked and scheming. Since when did Richard Mellon Scaife begin paying Kellerman to depict a world in which none of us live?